To this letter Lord John Russell appended a form of petition to the King, which may not uncourteously be termed the petition of the powerless Whig statesman. This petition smartly and smartingly complimented his Majesty upon his liberality in offering to allow his Queen fifty thousand a year, and to introduce her to a foreign court, at a time when he pretended to know that she was, allegedly, perfectly worthless, as woman, wife, and mother. With the domestic broils of King and Queen Lord John would not interfere; but, the King having made of them an affair of state, the ‘humble petition’ informs his Majesty that he has been exceedingly ill-advised. With excellent spirit does Lord John place upon record his abhorrence of enacting laws to suit a solitary case--laws ‘which at once create the offence, regulate the proof, decide upon the evidence, and invent the punishment.’ He asks if the Queen will escape from justice in the event of the bill not passing? Are the ministers afraid lest she may so defraud justice?--why, ‘that the Queen has _not_ fled from justice is not only the admission, but forms one of the chief charges, of her prosecutors.’ Her prosecution, then, will not serve the State. Can the revelation of her alleged iniquity at Como or Athens serve or influence public morals in England? What is the situation of the Queen? asks Lord John, who thus replies to his own query: ‘Separated from her husband during the first year of her marriage, she has been forced out of that circle of domestic affections which alone are able to keep a wife holy and safe from evil. For the period to which the accusation extends she has been also removed from the control of public opinion--the next remaining check the world can afford on female behaviour.’ Lord John perhaps makes a low estimate of female virtue when he thus concludes that women cease to be ‘holy and safe from evil’ when they cease to have a share in domestic affections or to be controlled by public opinion. There is more sly humour in what follows than there is of correctness in the noble lord’s estimation of female virtue. The drawer-up of the petition reminds the King that what most distresses him is ‘the uncrowning a royal head without necessity. We see much to alarm us in the example, nothing to console us in the immediate benefit.’ Not, says the petitioner, slyly, that we do not recognise the right of parliament to alter the succession to the crown. ‘None respect more than we do the Act of Settlement which took away the crown from its hereditary successors and gave it to the House of Brunswick;’ and, as the writer alludes to the possibility of the new subject of strife bringing the country to the verge of a civil war, he of course intimates that parliament may again be called upon to regulate the succession. The sum of the petition is to let the Queen alone. ‘From her future conduct your Majesty and the nation will be enabled to